Andrés Manuel López Obrador
Andrés Manuel López Obrador was president of Mexico from 2018 to 2024, elected on his third attempt with fifty-three per cent, the largest margin since the one-party days, the tabasqueno who had been mayor of Mexico City, had blockaded the capital's main avenue for six weeks after losing the election of 2006 by half a point and declared himself the legitimate president, and who governed as a morning press conference of two hours a day, with cash transfers to the old and the young, the army in charge of the airport, the trains and the customs, an oil refinery and a tourist train through the Yucatan jungle, hugs not bullets for the cartels and a hundred and eighty thousand murders, an abolished presidential plane, and, in his last month, a constitutional amendment that made every judge in the country elected by popular vote; he left office with approval above seventy per cent and his party with a supermajority, and his protegee Claudia Sheinbaum with the presidency. He was born in Macuspana in Tabasco in 1953, the son of shopkeepers, studied political science at the national university, and began in the PRI, running the indigenous affairs institute in Tabasco, before following Cuauhtemoc Cardenas out of it in 1988 into the PRD. He ran for governor of Tabasco twice against fraud and led marches to the capital over it. As head of government of Mexico City from 2000 to 2005 he built the elevated ring road, paid a pension to everyone over seventy, and was the most popular politician in the country when the Fox government tried to disqualify him over a contempt charge and had to back down. He lost to Calderon in 2006 by 0.56 per cent, refused the result, and lost to Pena Nieto in 2012 by six. He left the PRD in 2012 to found Morena, the movement of national regeneration, which in six years became the country's largest party. The presidency was austerity for the state and money for the people. The ministries were starved, the trusts abolished, the airport already half-built at Texcoco cancelled by a show of hands, the Dos Bocas refinery and the Maya Train built over the objections of every expert, and the pensions paid. The murders did not fall. He did not campaign in 2024 and did not need to. He retired to his ranch in Chiapas, said he would never speak of politics again, and published a book on the pre-Hispanic past.
- Lived: 1953 CE – ?
- Nationality: Mexican
- Roles: president, politician
